"A Letter To Joe Biden", First Published 18 May 2024

And at that time I was still in the camp that thought that the President was getting a bad rap about his age; I saw the problem; I acknowledged the appearances, and appearances quickly become perceptions and perceptions are usually spun into reality, but I didn't believe that Joe had any more than a serious perception problem.

Last night threw all that thinking into a cocked hat.

What I suggested on 18 May has become much more necessary not whimsical.

I doubt if it can be pulled off, but I've always been one to piss on the ashes.

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"Dear Mr. President

I am about week older than you and a deeply progressive Democrat.

I understand and dread the perils of another donnie the dildo presidency.

So I am writing you this letter.

Because, in spite of all your good intentions, your honor, integrity and your high qualifications for the office you hold, and your many achievements as President, you are likely to fail the most rudimentary test of presidential greatness: election to a second term.

You have made another donnie presidency nearly inevitable.

And we can't have that.

The fabric of our nation and the world's dependency upon that fabric will come un-woven with the great orange idiot flailing aimlessly around again.

But a variety of problems, mostly of your making, have gotten you and the rest of us to the brink of America becoming donnieLand.

And that is not good.

In fact, that is really, really, really bad.

George Washington, in a letter to Lafayette in 1788 made an observation that sums up the problem you have managed to crystalize.

He said, "There cannot, in my judgement, be the least danger that the President will by any practicable intrigue ever be able to continue himself one moment in office, much less perpetuate himself in it; but [in modern parlance substitute 'except' for 'but'] in the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity; and even then there is as much danger that any other species of domination would prevail. Though, when a people have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes".

The fact that seventy-four million Americans voted for trump in 2020, and even more appear to be ready to do so again seems to indicate that "the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity" have arrived in America.

And you have let this last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity be the operative factor in who wins, probably the last presidential election in America.

Why is that the operative factor?

Here's why.

As you are acutely aware, a handful of states actually elect the president, not the population of the Unites States.

As was proven in 2016, when the trump campaign's surgical use of the Manafort/Kilimnik Data Base in five of those states induced enough black voters to pass on voting that all five of those states went to donnie, and with them, the presidency.

Because of bad luck and bad decisions, you have likely lost significant tranches of voters in the various groups that constitute your base; that, in those five, six or seven states, will likely have the same effect on your chances of winning those electors as did the Manafort/Kilimnik Data Base in 2016 against Clinton.

Add to that the widespread republican voter repression actions across our nation and you have an unwinnable contest.

Once decent people have been alienated, or winnowed, enough of the "the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity" are left to tip the balance.

donnie wins; you lose.

And that is not good.

Here, in random order, are what I think have been some of your bad decisions and some of your bad luck.

These things are all having a fatally adverse effect on your chances in the upcoming campaign and election.

Where there is a relationship - bad luck induced by bad decision, or bad decision as a reaction to bad luck, I have made the two immediately adjacent in the list.

The problem with them is that they all have deep influence on your current plight, and they can't be un-done.

Those dice have already been cast.

They can't be un-cast.

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Bad Luck: In trump's second impeachment, by verdict day in 2021, the republican party had become so rotten that only seven of the republican senators voted the obvious guilty verdict; that left a deeply wounded and extremely cunning adversary on the playing field ready for violence and mayhem.

Bad Decision: The attorney General you appointed looked good but hasn't panned out.

Bad Luck: The Attorney General you appointed let crucial months elapse before appointing investigative and indictive authority to be brought to the most serious question in the history of our Republic: did the ex-president plan and incite an insurrection? By the time that authority was appointed there was not enough time to find facts, indict and try the case, leaving the therefore un-tried and un-convicted insurrectionist (that deeply wounded and extremely cunning adversary) home free.

Bad Luck: You didn't get to be President until you were 79 years old; that makes you 82 this election year; it is functionally impossible to make a convincing case that your remaining lifespan is highly likely to be the four years of another term in office.

Bad Luck: Kirsten Sinema and Joe Mansion were part of your excruciatingly thin Senate majority. Since they both depended on big business for their office they were unwilling to vote for the most sweeping, and most needed advancement of the social contract since the New Deal; had it passed your place in history and your second term would have been locked; lacking passage, you are totally subject to fate's whimsy and the amount and nature of your luck and the number and quality of your decisions.

Bad Decision: Staying mostly out of sight during term one.  Like Reagan, you should have gone to the nation every time the opposition lie machine invented a new lie or blocked another policy; instead you stayed mute in the White House. That harmed not only your strength of position on a daily basis throughout your term, it has also cumulatively left you, at best, vaguely defined; that is not a good place for a second term aspirant to be. 

Bad Decision: Choosing Kamala Harris as running mate (better could have been Abrams or Buttigieg).

Bad Luck: Kamala Harris has not caught on. That leaves you needing to argue that not only are you likely to live out a second term, or, if you don't you've got Harry Truman in the wings waiting to pick up the baton.  That leaves you talking about abstract hypotheticals instead of meat and potatoes.

Bad Decision: Getting out of Afghanistan without planning for withdrawal with at least Operation Overlord level meticulous planning. The buck still stops with you. That meant that anything short of Swiss watch perfection in withdrawing would be a disaster that you could ill afford to waste time talking about. But that's what you got.

Bad Luck: Twenty years of money, military training and physical, social and financial infrastructure investment collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the return of the Taliban. Here luck intercepts decision: betting on the come because of the investment of all that blood and treasure was a disaster.

Bad Decision: Unconditional support of Netanyahu in his response to the October 7, 2023 massacre of Israelis.

Bad Luck: An otherwise potentially good decision didn't have a chance to really be good because it depended upon the irrational, trapped-animal actions of Netanyahu, a criminal domestically and internationally.

Bad Luck: The republican party has become a mafia-like thing with a godfather-like thing pulling all its strings and making government impossible in the United States.

Bad Luck: An immigration agreement that was a massive step forward for the Country was killed in the house of representatives by the tentacles of that mafia so they could retain a dysfunctional immigration system as a campaign issue.

Bad Luck: A near majority of the American People have entered "the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity".

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So what to do?

The real answer is I just don't know.

But the only thing I can think of is that you and yours need to figure out damn fast who in the Democratic Party can actually win in 2024.

This must be not only fast, it must also be secret.

And the chosen one needs to be vetted with intensity such as history has never seen; no late breaking surprises can be allowed; no more mistakes can happen.

Of course the Convention needs to be contrived: there should be no announcement of your intention to step down; it must look like an old-fashioned smoke-filled room dog and cat fight with the chosen one coming out nominated.

Of course the narrative of what has happened and how it happened needs to be created and written and agreed to by all the players substantially ahead of time, like right now.

And of course, its promulgation needs to be planned at the level of a streaming service big-buck gamble: every hour/day/week and month of the plot must be flawlessly scripted, understood, rehearsed and incrementally rolled out.

Americans love political drama.

A brilliantly contrived political drama can still defeat donnie the dildo and his mafia infrastructure.

So get crackin'.

We can still win this thing.

And you can join President Washington as someone who knew when to step down.

For the good of our country. 

So There You Have It: The Debate Is A Disaster

 If you don't want donnie as president.

The disaster has three faces.

Face one is Biden's total ineffectiveness; he has even fallen into stuttering; he hasn't won a point on anything he has said; if I were undecided, I would see no reason to vote for him.

Face two is that Biden's demeanor has documented what many have feared; he is too old.

Face three is the most un-nerving face: trump has lied, invented and asserted, no reality to be seen in the last hour and a half; but it has sounded really good; maybe we are in a post truth, post fact, post reality world.

Some Thoughts Previously Posted? I Can't Remember.

Einstein said that E = mc2.

There are a bunch of things this equation says and a lot more that it implies.

Mainly, though, it says that there is a huge amount of energy trapped in mass and light.

There was an instance, we are told, when there was nothing and nothing was everything all trapped in a nothing called a singularity.

In due course the singularity achieved its destiny: it became everything.

An uncontrolled variable generated by this occurrence was where everything was.

At the point of nothing becoming everything, everything was very close to where it had just previously been nothing.

Not exactly, but close.

But that was a fleeting condition.

The energy released by nothing becoming everything brought a new condition into being: speed.

Speed drove newly minted everything from wherever it had just not been to where it was about to be, and would continue to about to be for …

For what?

We call it time.

Time came into being as a byproduct of nothing becoming everything.

It was the measure of – something – but it could be described by knowing where everything was then and where everything was now.

Then and now were words not known before the singularity had become everything.

Then and now are words that let humans sense the thing they call time.

Since then, time, once sensed, time has been represented with a thing humans call a clock.

But you can’t see time with a clock.

You can only show a representation of its assumed existence: clicks and clangs.

Those are not time; they are just a way of indicating that something we really don’t understand and really can’t describe does in fact exist.

And that it is advancing.

To some end point.

That’s strange.

But not as strange as light.

Light is a wave.

But it is made up of particles.

And it’s really, really fast.

And that speed is the upper limit of possible speed, we are told.

So why is energy equal to a given mass times the speed of light squared?

Speed of light, times speed of light is exponentially faster than the speed of light, isn’t it?

So how does that work?

It works kinda like the horror that most of human-kind have for the concept of a godless universe.

When one admits that the mayhem meted out by human-kind over our tenure on earth has been meted out under the banner “Deus Vult”, or “Gott Mit Uns”, and others in spirit similar to those two, it becomes difficult to say that we need a supreme being to bring out our kinder, gentler selves.

Someone needs to test the hypothesis that we might not kill each other if we left the Supreme Being out of our frame of reference and substituted instead the idea that all we need is the will to treat others as we ourselves would choose to be treated.

 I think someone did that once.

It didn’t go well for him.

So I guess that’s a moot hypothesis.

And then there is that quantum thing.

Einstein said something like "at the outer edges of my equations things get squirrely” - or something to that effect.

He was talking about the fact that things can be, simultaneously, in more than one place at the same time.

Remember, however, that time is pretty slippery, so that observation, if true, may not mean a whole lot.

These shards of brightly colored glass from the great question jar of the cosmos that has fallen – shattered – to the floor, are the pieces from which I have created the mosaic of the story about to be told. 

Angry Is Not Effective

 I finally realized what I find so dysfunctional about how the president keeps presenting himself.

He never is anything but a shouting angry old man.

I don't think if he tried to change to a more Jack Kennedy or Barack Obama demeanor he would win any more voters, but at least that change would eliminate the appearance that he is a cranky old man in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

I guess the problem is that, when he tries to simmer down, he just sounds mumblingly incoherent, and old.

So, his handlers must have decided, being the "get off my lawn" guy, is the best presentation.

Given some of the stuff I have seen about trump's mental acuity, I think we are in for an interesting drooling contest.

Too bad the world's wellbeing is so directly affected.

Couple Quotes

 

From The Hill, in relation to the real possibility that donnie will be under house arrest after being sentenced on 11July 2024 (several days later the MAGA hoard will nominate him to the presidency of the united states of america):

"For Democrats, it would present an obvious opportunity to underscore their case that the former president is manifestly unfit for high office. Eighty-five percent of Democrats approved of Trump’s conviction in the New York case, according to an Associated Press (AP)/NORC poll released earlier this week.

"But a Trump-free Milwaukee convention {recently identified by the dildo as a 'horrible city'} could be equally energizing for the former president’s MAGA base who fervently believe he has been victimized {'crucified' is the operative word utilized by that christian hoard}. Only 15 percent of Republicans approved of the recent conviction, according to the same AP poll".

From George Washington in a letter to Lafayette in 1788:

"There cannot, in my judgement, be the least danger that the President will by any practicable intrigue ever be able to continue himself one moment in office, much less perpetuate himself in it; but [in modern parlance substitute 'except' for 'but'] in the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity; and even then there is as much danger that any other species of domination would prevail. Though, when a people have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes".

From Salon

 These words in an article by Mike Lofgren caught my eye.

They pretty well sum up what is wrong with us and why things are the way that they are.

"What is a belief, anyway? It can be defined, approximately, in terms of the mental perception that something is true based on generally accepted evidence or established standards of logic. But belief also has a secondary meaning: an attitude, disposition or emotional commitment that has nothing to do with facts or logic. It is a stance that can be firmly maintained regardless of evidence to the contrary and, taken to an extreme, becomes the willful suspension of critical thinking.

"In contrast to the doubt and uncertainty that assail most people when considering complex matters, the dogmatic vehemence with which adherents of various fringe ideas often advocate their case can tempt us to conclude that an “untrue” belief is held more strongly than a “true” one. But this certitude {in "untrue" beliefs} can only be sustained if it is never questioned, because the leaders of authoritarian movements that propagate these beliefs instinctively know their doctrines are brittle and cannot survive open debate.

"That is the reason fundamentalist Christians have built an entire subculture of home-schooling, Bible colleges, retreats and a vast body of approved literature to reinforce their dogma and avoid contact with contaminating ideas; conservatives have done much the same with their Fox News bubble. Since all authoritarian movements are founded on obtaining followers of weak character and low intellectual curiosity, and sustaining them within that information bubble, an outsider challenging even absurd doctrines will have a difficult task".

Ira Glass Fills In For Cronkite: Come Retribution

George Washington said it in 1788, in a letter to Lafayette concerning the newly promulgated Constitution of the United states of America: "There cannot, in my judgement, be the least danger that the President will by any practicable intrigue ever be able to continue himself one moment in office, much less perpetuate himself in it; but [in modern parlance substitute 'except' for 'but'] in the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity; and even then there is as much danger that any other species of domination would prevail. Though, when a people have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes".

MAGA is "in the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity".

They are "a people have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master ...".

And now "he comes".

And he's not even smart.

In fact he's an idiot.

I took this picture of a centuries old message pillar in Rome in 2017.

So, the world knew it then.

But this is now.

And the idiot has turned.

As worms are known to do.

He has Project 25.

No more Mister Stupid Guy.

And nothing is more frightening than a dumb shit trying to be smart.

Remember Fredo?

But Fredo has taken control of an American political party and the gloves are off.

So what does that mean for everyday garden variety Americans?

Ira answers that question.

Where are you going to go?

After November 5?

A Perfect Trilogy

I just finished watching the last episode of season three of The Newshour.

It ended where it had to, but more would have been welcome.

Maybe a second trilogy is in order.   



Sent from my iPhone

What Didn't You Understand About This?

Rot is the center, is the activating force, is the real reason that an incompetent pretender to mafia bossism can run the press, the judiciary, the election system, and the Constitution of the United Staes of America ragged.

The rot is a lot of our people.

I encounter them in bars, and they think I look like one of them, so they immediately assume I am a member of their farcical fantasy football clique; so I have some idea of how they think.

And that's the point.

They don't think.

They can't think.

They all have been beset with some brain worm that has eaten most of what the rest of us think with.

Here is what I said a few days ago, that I would have expected, and surely had hoped would get a lot of traffic.

But it didn't.

So here it is again.

I god damn think - I god damn believe - that Washington called trump out in 1788.

And I god damn want America to at least think about what Washington said.

And I'd like more than 10 page views.

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For some time now I have been having a vague realization of some kind of clarity that has been forming in my conception of the MAGA crowd; it crystallized recently.  

MAGA is not even remotely a philosophical or political grouping.  

It can best be described as a big drunken tailgate party that got massively out of control and doesn't know what to do next now that the beer has run out.  

The main attraction to being MAGA seems to be being seen and being heard and perceiving one another as influencers.

And being hunted down and ridiculed by Jordan Klepper.

And contributing to donnie's legal defense fund.

And the hats, sweatshirts and MAGA/trump certified Bible are all really big attractions.

It's just too bad that the fabric of our nation and the world's dependency upon that fabric will finally come un-woven with donnie nominally in charge again.

George Washington once alluded to a condition that he considered, if it ever were ever to occur, fatally terminal for the health of our Republic.  

In a letter to Lafayette in 1788 he said that the only way the office of president could be transformed into a dictator or monarch would be if the people had entered "the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity".

And he said additionally, "and even then there is as much danger that any other species of domination would prevail. Though, when a people have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes."

Looks like Washington, 236 years ago, saw donnie and MAGA with clarity.

"Corrupted morals and political depravity" have worked their way through the system and have become dominant.

And donnie is going to win and "it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes."

In any event, he has no quarter from which to come, he being all over the place all the time.

But his morons, those of "corrupted morals and political depravity" love him sans quarter.

I can hear Washington as he plants his seal in the hot wax on the letter to Lafayette, "Oh what's the use?"